A squirrel was doing acrobatics on a bird feeder at breakfast time (and clinging on to a bar with the very end of one toenail) out on the pergola, a husband and wife blackbird were having an argument and several pigeons were hoovering the patio. Afterwards – tidying myself up and stuffing stuff in my bag preceded me giving Soot the 20 year old cat a stair lift down from my bed and topping up his bowl; sun was out and it was 6°C with 35km/h gusts at 11.43am, and I was layered up as we left.

A Christmas card got stuck in a neighbours door, and a man at house number 12 was in his front garden with a stepladder dangling lights round his front door and we had a quick chat; there was quite a lot of traffic on the main road nearby, a man who resembled a cocktail stick due to his height and skinniness was jogging along an avenue, a house on another avenue had snowmen painted on the windows, and a small boy (accompanied by a mother and a very skinny greyhound) ran across the road holding a really really long thin branch. A funeral directors office was offering prepaid funeral plans for £25 per month; most of the shops downstairs in the shopping centre had kicked the bucket and closed; there was a queue in the framing shop at a time I forgot – and I forgot because the man behind the counter told me the fabric I wanted framed had to be attached to the frame in some way and I decided to have a think about it (because it’s really nice fabric and I don’t want to have holes in it)…

…and there was a so-called Santa’s postbox on another street and someone was cuddling a Chihuahua.

In the library building (in there as Mum was desperate for coffee and there’s a cafe) I observed leaflets on a shelf that were about Warwickshire Youth Choirs, Shrek – the musical, something to do with Handel the Messiah, a production of Pirates Love Underpants, and a lot of other stuff (including advertising a supersized polyphony 2); and the cafe bit of the building had protein balls, baklava buns, billionaires shortbread, a coffee machine was causing extremely loud noises, and a room labeled as the larder looked a bit too big and posh to be a larder; a tiny girl seated in a highchair with a carton of apple juice was wearing a cycling helmet with flamingos all over it, and 2 babies (presumably twins – and I heard the father telling someone nearby that they were 8 months old) in pink clothing were in a pram and 1 was trying to grab a banana off the table. Back outside at 12pm, trumpet noises were coming from somewhere – and when the road was crossed, it was found to be from the man who usually plays the accordion, who was sat on a bench in the gardens. Geese were drifting all over the pond…

…some ducks were showering under the fountains – and 1 was repeatedly submerging his or her head and 1 was entirely white, and 2 swans were in a corner and preening.

I followed a squirrel around – and after a brief nibble of something found in the foliage…

…he or she shot up a ‘swamp cypress’ tree; and I saw a child getting excited by a Corgi; a man was setting up an amplifier for his guitar by the main gate, Waggi Doggy ice cream was advertised at The Aviary Kiosk, and I was losing feeling in my fingers (it was 12.30pm – with bright sun out), the benches were all in memory of people, and another child was wailing in the main square of the Gardens. Floatation Therapy was being advertised on a street I forgot the name of; gin advent calendars, bottles shaped like skulls, and Havana cigars were in the window of Decanter Spirits, and The Cotswold Trading Company had big fake mushrooms in its windows.
The shopping centre had got busy by 12.45pm, a Calendar Club stall had ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ playing from it – and some extremely strange calendars, and ‘Gifted’ had Highland cow soft toys and unusual door stops. A jigsaw was found for Uncle in WHSmith – where Fungi Frankie soft toys said on them ‘I repeat what you say’ and ‘I have groovy dance moves’…

…and big Toblerones and lots of pringles were amongst the unbelievable mass of stuff for sale. In Tescos, a man had 7 large tubs of Celebrations in his trolley, there were Curtis the Cavapoo soft toys amongst all the other strange stuff; and at 1.37pm I was in the park at the top of the street, a car on a nearby Avenue had antlers attached; I briefly followed a Terrier of some sort with a Christmas jumper on, then went through another little park as the route home (and made it just after 2pm).

Hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!